Creative Thinking
Be Creative, but...
What, Why, and How
Can we teach creativity?
Research about Creativity

Critical Thinking
What is critical thinking?
Attributes of Critical Thinkers
Why teach critical thinking?
How can we teach it effectively?
The Logic of Critical Thinking
The Ethics of Critical Thinking

An important goal of education
is helping students learn how to think more productively by combining creative
thinking (to generate ideas) and critical
thinking (to evaluate ideas). Both modes of thinking
are essential for a well-rounded productive thinker, according to scholars
in both fields:Richard Paul (a prominent
advocate of CRITICAL THINKING)
says, "Alternative solutions are often not
given, they must be generated or thought-up. Critical thinkers
must be creative thinkers as well, generating possible solutions in
order to find the best one. Very often a problem persists, not
because we can't tell which available solution is best, but because
the best solution has not yet been made available — no one
has thought of it yet." {source} Patrick Hillis & Gerard
Puccio (who focus on CREATIVE
THINKING) describe the combining of divergent generation and convergent
evaluation in a strategy of Creative Problem Solving that "contains
many tools which can be used interchangeably within any of the stages. These
tools are selected according to the needs of the task and are either
divergent (i.e., used to generate options) or convergent (i.e., used
to evaluate options)." {source} Craig Rusbult describes
how Productive Thinking is a result of combining
and how we can help students improve their creative-and-critical thinking skills by using Design Process for Problem Solving.

Multiple Intelligences & Learning StylesPeople can think productively
in a variety of ways, as described in a theory of MULTIPLE
INTELLIGENCES developed by Howard Gardner. Therefore, we
should try to find teaching strategies that will be effective for students
with different LEARNING STYLES.Visual Logic: We
can think logically in a variety of ways; useful tools for VISUAL
THINKING include
visually logical organizing techniques — concept maps, matrices
and diagrams (cluster, hierarchical, webbing, Venn,...), flowcharts,... — that
can encourage and facilitate creative-and-critical thinking.

Thinking Skills in Education

Educators are becoming more
interested in designing instruction that will help students improve their
thinking skills. An excellent overview is Teaching
Thinking Skills by Kathleen Cotton; the second half of her page is
a comprehensive bibliography.Another useful page — What
Is a Thinking Curriculum? (by Fennimore & Tinzmann) — begins with
principles and then moves into applications in Language Arts, Mathematics,
Sciences, and Social Sciences.Educational Leadership devoted
an entire issue, including an interview with Howard Gardner,
to Teaching
for Multiple Intelligences — and you can read (on the web
for free) the first three articles, and all abstracts.Learning
in Bloom's Taxonomy can be described in terms of domains (cognitive, affective,
psycho-motor) and levels, as you can see in this overview (of the original & revised versions) & introduction & elaboration. And
here are tips for using Bloom's Taxonomy — sample
questions & assessing
learning objectives (with examples) & course
design.

If you're wondering "What
can I do in my classroom tomorrow?", eventually there will be a section for "thinking
skills activities" in
the area for TEACHING
ACTIVITIES.

Two related
questions are: How can we effectively teach
thinking skills? and What role
should thinking skills play in education? As explained in
the two papers above, a range of views exist for each question. Among
the unresolved issues are the amount of time to invest in developing
thinking skills, and the advantages of two general teaching approaches: infusion (in
which thinking skills are closely integrated with content instruction)
and separate programs (with thinking skills
taught as an independent curriculum). Kathleen Cotton says, "Of
the demonstrably effective programs, about half are of the infused
variety, and the other half are taught separately from the regular
curriculum. ... The strong support that exists for both approaches...
indicates that either approach can be effective. Freseman represents
what is perhaps a means of reconciling these differences [between
enthusiastic advocates of each approach] when he writes, at the conclusion
of his 1990 study: “Thinking skills need to be taught directly
before they are applied to the content areas. ... I consider
the concept of teaching thinking skills directly to be of value especially
when there follows an immediate application to the content area.” "For principles and examples
of infusion, check the National Center for Teaching Thinking which
lets you see What
is Infusion? (an introduction to the art of infusing thinking skills
into content instruction), and sample
lessons (for different subjects, grade levels, and thinking skills).Our
links-page for Teaching
Strategies to promote Active Learning summarizes
and explores a variety of ideas about effective teaching (based on
principles of constructivism,
meaningful reception,...) designed to stimulate active learning and
improve
thinking skills. Later,
maybe beginning in December 2011, a continuing exploration of the
web will reveal more web-pages with
useful "thinking skills & problem solving" ideas (especially
for K-12 students & teachers) and we'll share these with you, here
and in TEACHING
ACTIVITIES.Of course,
thinking skills are not just for scholars and schoolwork, as emphasized
in an ERIC Digest, Higher
Order Thinking Skills in Vocational Education. And
you can get information about 23 Programs
that Work from the U.S. Dept of Education.

Problem-Solving Methods

In design and science,
the goal is to solve a problem. But what is a problem? In
common language, a problem is an unpleasant situation, a difficulty. But
in education, the first definition in Webster's Dictionary — "a
question raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution" — is
a more common meaning. In design, a problem is
any situation where you have an opportunity to make a difference, to
make things better; and problem solving is converting an actual current state into a desired future state. Whenever you are thinking creatively and
critically about ways to increase the quality of life (or to avoid
a decrease in quality), you are actively involved in problem solving. Although
the term "design" is used most often in art (for graphic
design) and engineering, the process of design occurs in all fields
and in everyday life.

Design
and Science

In some ways, design method (above)
is similar to scientific method (below) but there is a new focus for action. In
science the main goal is to understand nature, to construct a theory and
test its accuracy with reality checks that help
us decide if "the way we think the world is" corresponds to "the
way the way the world really is." It can be useful to think of science as
the designing of theories, and conventional design as
the designing of products or strategies.

Problem Solving in Education

A problem is
any situation where you have an opportunity to make a difference, to
make things better; and problem solving is
converting an actual current situation (the NOW-state)
into a desired future situation (the GOAL-state). Whenever
you are thinking creatively and critically about ways to increase the
quality of life (or avoid a decrease in quality) you are actively
involved in problem solving.For example, a motivated
student — perhaps inspired by an effective teacher — can
adopt a problem-solving approach to personal education by
imagining the benefits of improved personal knowledge-and-skill in
the future.Dany Adams (Smith College)
helps students learn how to think more effectively by combining
critical thinking skill with scientific method: "Because
the scientific method is a formalization of critical thinking, it
can be used as a simple model that... puts critical thinking at the
center of a straightforward, easily implemented, teaching strategy.
... Explicitly discussing the logic and the thought processes
that inform experimental methods works better than hoping students
will ‘get it’ if they hear enough experiments described." Problem-Based
Learning is a way to improve motivation, thinking, and
learning: you can read a brief
overview of Problem-Based Learning and (in ERIC
Digests) using Problem-Based Learning for
science & math plus a
longer introduction - ten
requirements - challenges
for students & teachers (we never said it would be easy!) —
two websites to explore (Samford
University - PBL background - process -
and [click the links] evaluation & more) (Illinois Math & Science
Academy - about
us [with links to mission,...] and PBL Network [sitemap includes external
links]) — the book-intro for
Problems
as Possibilities - a
search in ACSD for problem-based
learning -
and a comprehensive links-page
for Problem-Based Learning. Iowa State University's ThinkSpace is "an instructional and collaborative website designed to provide real-world problems and environments to students."
Basically, this section
is Part 2 of Thinking
Skills in Education because
problem-solving methods (like Design Method and Scientific Method)
are just strategies for effectively combining familiar thinking
skills in order to achieve a goal, to solve a problem. Thinking
Skills and Problem-Solving Methods are
closely related, as shown in an Overview
of Thinking Skills that compares four perspectives:
Design Method (Rusbult), Dimensions of Thinking (Marzano, et al), Infusion of Thinking Skills (Swartz), Four Frames of Knowledge (Perkins); more generally, Problem Solving & Thinking
Skills in Education is a sitemap for pages by Craig Rusbult.

ERIC
Digests give tips for parents
helping their children with problem-solving homework and summarize
research about problem
solving in science courses.You can read about
"word
problems" (like those typically found in textbooks
and on exams) and general problem-solving strategies that are also
useful outside school. For problem solving in everyday
life (including business,...) a series
of pages
by Robert
Harris provides a thorough
overview
of practical problem solving if
you scroll
down to the section about "Tools for the Age of Knowledge" and
you'll find An Introduction to Creative Thinking, Creative Thinking Techniques,
Criteria for Evaluating a Creative Solution, Introduction to Problem Solving,
Human-Factor Phenomena in Problem Solving, Problem Solving Techniques, Introduction
to Decision Making, and
(in other parts of his links-page) much more.

A DISCLAIMER: The internet
offers an abundance of resources, so our main challenge is selectivity,
and we have tried to find high-quality pages for you to read. But
the pages above don't necessarily represent views of the American Scientific
Affiliation. As always, we encourage you to use your critical thinking
skills to evaluate everything you read.

This website for Whole-Person Education has TWO KINDS OF LINKS:
an ITALICIZED LINK keeps you inside a page, moving you to
another part of it, and
a NON-ITALICIZED LINK opens another page. Both keep everything inside this window,
so your browser's BACK-button will always take you back to where you were.